Things To Do

Inside Pussy Riot

You’ll want to dig out your balaclava.

Because Pussy Riot are going to take you on a journey. Also, it’s getting colder.

The post-punk experimental protest and art collective are taking over the Saatchi Gallery this winter with a crowd-funded show put together by founder, Nadya Tolokonnikova, and the theatre company behind the Olivier-nominated Alice’s Adventures Underground, Les Enfants Terribles.

Running for six weeks, it’ll coincide with the exhibition Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism, and is designed to give audiences an eye-opening insight to the dangers of dissidence in a part of the world where freedom of speech is severely limited.

A fully immersive theatrical installation, it will allow you to relive the experiences of Pussy Riot in the aftermath of their 2012 protest (if you need a little refresher, that was the year that they performed a ‘punk prayer’ protesting the political system in Moscow’s cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and were arrested after 35 seconds).

Your journey too will start at the altar with sticking two fingers up at the establishment before you’re forced to give up your freedom for the sake of a liberal world. Arrest, a court trial, and a taste of the 2 years of imprisonment (including bouts of solitary confinement and enforced labour) that Nadya endured all follow. You’ll be faced with religious figures preaching about the place of women, and you’ll delve into the underside of the Russian establishment, all authentically recreated with Les Enfants’ characteristic attention to detail.